‘The Jungle Book’ Has Company in the Journey From the Page to the Screen (Photos)

Disney is set to make big bucks revitalizing its past work when "The Jungle Book" is released this weekend. Obviously, the animated classic comes to mind, but Rudyard Kipling's stories have a long history in film.

The first film version of "The Jungle Book" came 25 years before Disney's version, with Indian actor Sabu playing Mowgli.

Disney

Disney also did a previous, completely-live-action "Jungle Book" in 1994, featuring a pre-"Game Of Thrones" Lena Headey.

MGM

Another book with multiple adaptations under its name is Lew Wallace's "Ben-Hur." Most people remember the Charlton Heston epic that won 11 Oscars ...

MGM

... but before that was a 1925 silent film praised for having an epic scale never seen on film before. It helped establish MGM as one of Hollywood's studio titans.

MGM/Paramount

Now MGM is going back to "Ben-Hur" for a third remake (this time teaming with Paramount), featuring Morgan Freeman as Ben-Hur's chariot trainer.

New Line

The "Lord of the Rings" films turned Peter Jackson from midnight movie auteur to Oscar-winning superstar, but Tolkien wasn't the only influence on his style.

United Artists

Jackson also credits the 1978 animated "LOTR" adaptation as a major inspiration. Directed by animation legend Ralph Bakshi, the film is a cult curiosity with animation buffs, but didn't make enough money to get a sequel that would have finished the trilogy.

Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" has seen film adaptations for over a century, the most recent being Disney's 3D animated version starring Jim Carrey.

The most critically acclaimed adaptation is 1951's "Scrooge," which starred Alastair Sim as the titular misanthrope.

But the earliest version of "Scrooge" dates all the way back to 1901, and comes in the form of a short film that was one of the earliest demonstrations of moving pictures. Dickens' tale is one of the first literary works ever adapted into a movie.

Which books get adapted more than any other? That honor has to go to the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, which have been adapted into more than 200 films with over 75 actors, like Robert Downey, Jr., playing the famed detective.